Facing up to the problems of real people

The pioneering transplant surgery by a French team last month, on a woman savaged by a dog, has forced some in-depth consideration of the complex aesthetic, emotional and ethical reactions that govern our relationship with the human face. As strange as it may seem, this is also something game developers are having to get to grips with.

Writing about the Xbox 360 conversion of King Kong last week, Clive Thompson, a technology journalist and blogger, claimed that the scariest part of the game is not the giant ape itself or one of the many prehistoric monsters - but the representation of Naomi Watts. Although at a glance she appears authentic, her lifeless eyes, plastic skin and weirdly slack mouth soon become offputting.

Thompson quotes from the "Uncanny Valley" theory, put forward by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori, who claims that representations of humans remain emotive and endearing while they are simply defined, but as soon as they approach photorealism, we start to see tiny faults and the illusion melts. This is why Pixar and DreamWorks prefer to base their animated movies around robots, toys and monsters, and why most people find Madame Tussauds creepy.

Thompson is not alone in his reaction to "realistic" characters. A game designer friend emailed me last week with a pet theory - that Electronic Arts's Xbox 360 sports sims have left critics unimpressed because its obsession with realism has produced an unappealing onslaught of dead-faced sportsmen.

So, should developers now look into more stylised representations of human characters or should they go forward, Frankenstein-like, with the quest for life? As studios get to grips with the next-generation formats, they will overcome barriers to facial realism. Using graphics technology known as shaders, designers are learning how to add detailed lighting effects to human characters on a per-pixel basis, emulating the reflective nature of skin and eliminating the plastic effect. With more processing power, artists will be able to build the complex muscular systems behind a face, thereby emulating the mechanics of expression. They will add environment-mapping to eyes to reflect surroundings. The "death mask" look of current in-game humans will be gone.

But how will we then feel about hitting one of these characters? How will we feel about shooting them? So far, even for the very best of the current titles, low-resolution representations of human characters have let us stand back - a little - from what we were doing. But high-res ultra-realistic faces grimacing in pain and fear - will that be fun? Too close to the bone is an over-familiar cliche, but here it may be all too appropriate.

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